Best OS and XBMC platform to run with my hardware and uses?
#1
[Off Topic Preface]
So I recently replaced my trusty xbox running xbmc with a Revo1600 since I have a new 54" plasma 1080p TV I decided it was time to pick something that could provide it with an adequate feed.
[/Off Topic Preface]

My question (actually looking for more of an opinionated input): What flavor of xbmc should I go with since I am also looking to be able to use it has a torrent box, Hulu Desktop, Possible BD and netflix and easily access shared folders/drives from other windows computers? The way I see it I have a few options. (I also have a stand alone BD player with netflix so that isn't has important).

1. Windows - this will allow me to easily run my torrent program and share my drives/folders on the Revo, but I lose HW accel for the GPU under windows so to be able to take advantage of that I would need the Broadcom Crystal HD (more hardware expense). But I would have easy use of netflix, BD player and Hulu

2. XBMC Live - Allows hardware acceleration, but no possibility of netflix or BD playing and harder to intigrate hulu and torrents.

3. Linux - Same as above apart from it may be easier to integrate those things

4. Abandon XBMC and use W7MC, this is currently what I am using and it works great for my other needs (torrent, file sharing, BD, netflix) and allows me to easily Remote Desktop in to it too. Problem is that I find XBMC to be a far superior media player/center.

So I am leaning towards option 3 (trust me I have been back and forth and have already installed all 4 options and swapped back and forth). My only concern is the ability to remote desktop in to linux from a windows machine and then launching and using a USB IR remote especially to launch Hulu Desktop if it can't be intigrated into XBMC (or at least launched from).

Anyway maybe everyone could offer some input and the way they went about it with similar hardware.
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#2
jakejm79 Wrote:My question (actually looking for more of an opinionated input):

Opinionated input? In the XBMC forums? Surely not :-)

I use a Revo, and I use it with WinXP because:

- I've been using Windows since v3.0 and know it inside out: I've used unix a handful of times and then only for server apps.

- all my favourite programs are Windows apps, including many I've written myself.

- since I have only a few 1080p videos, and those are only for testing, XBMC works perfectly on Windows.

- WinXP seems to be a bit faster than Windows 7 on my Revo, though that may be because it only has 1GB RAM.

In my case the only benefit of moving to Linux would be to get hardware acceleration, but as I said above I don't need this (at the moment), so it's an easy decision.

Actually I have bought a CrystalHD card, and it works perfectly with my test 1080p videos. At £20 inc. P&P from eBay it was hardly a major expense. Note however that at the moment you'll need to compile your own OpenGL build as DirectX support is still in progress.

JR
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#3
Thanks JR, I guess I was banking on the Crystal HD being close $70 like the MSRP was saying, and that felt like a lot since I only paid $200 for the revo. I really do need the hardware acceleration (otherwise if it was only SD content I would have kept my xbox). Maybe I will scope out ebay and see what I can grab one for. But I am thinking about installing ubuntu this weekend, it's good to learn new things right? Laugh

Oh wow I didn't realize how cheap they are, $22 shipped. So you are saying the 1080P performance is good, any problems at all or would you (or anyone else) say it is comparable to VDPAU under linux? I think this may be the way I go. Now I do have a couple of questions:
1. Does the Broadcom also do flash HW acceleration, or would it not matter since the Ion covers that and it will automatically pick the correct device (i.e broadcom for xbmc and ion for flash/silverlight).
2. I assume xbmc will use the ion for the opengl for the menus and then just the broadcom for assisting in playing back content.
3. I assume the broadcom will HW accelerate anything that is play back in xbmc, i.e. I shouldn't have a problem with my h.264 files that are in .mkv format correct?
3. Is there anything I am missing here?
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#4
I've only had a brief play with XBMCLive on the Revo as I use too many Windows apps for it to be a viable option. From my limited experience the Crystal HD and VDPAU work equally well.

Over simplifying a bit, the Crystal HD is like a math coprocessor not a graphics device. XBMC manages all the graphics whether it's just displaying menus or playing a video. The Crystal HD is used to assist decompression of the MPEG encoded data. Bear in mind that the Crystal HD is still in development, so while I didn't find anything it couldn't play that doesn't mean it can decode everything.

The only thing I can think of that you might want to consider is that the Crystal uses the one and only PCIe slot. On the Revo 3600 and 3610 this means sacrificing the wireless card. Having said that, I have an idea the Revo 1600 doesn't have a wireless card anyway.

JR
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#5
Thanks, it seems from the specs that it will play divx, xvid, wmv, h264, mpeg 2 and Bluray so I think it will do everything that have. So now I am pretty excited my esata 2TB HDD just turned up, my MCE remote and CrystalHD have been ordered and my new entertainment center should be here at the end of the week. Yes I have the 1600 so the slot is just empty. Still seems a waste that I will now have both the ion and the crystalHD, but for $22 it's still a cheap windows based htpc.
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#6
Just to clarify, adding the CrystalHD card to the 1600 (w/ 1GB) will allow for a standard Windows XP install of XBMC and handle 1080p at least as well if not better than the Live install without the CrystalHD card?
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#7
ForceTen Wrote:Just to clarify, adding the CrystalHD card to the 1600 (w/ 1GB) will allow for a standard Windows XP install of XBMC and handle 1080p at least as well if not better than the Live install without the CrystalHD card?

Adding the Crystal HD will allow the recent development OpenGL builds of XBMC to play 1080p on a Revo 1600 in Windows XP, Vista and 7 at least as well if not better than the Live install without the CrystalHD card.

Currently it does not work with the DirectX builds, though undoubtably it will soon.

JR
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#8
jhsrennie Wrote:Adding the Crystal HD will allow the recent development OpenGL builds of XBMC to play 1080p on a Revo 1600 in Windows XP, Vista and 7 at least as well if not better than the Live install without the CrystalHD card.

Currently it does not work with the DirectX builds, though undoubtably it will soon.

JR

I just ordered a card. I personally like this idea because then I can make use of some of the 160 GB for media storage while staying in my comfort zone by using Windows, running XBMC.

Dan
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#9
jhsrennie Wrote:Adding the Crystal HD will allow the recent development OpenGL builds of XBMC to play 1080p on a Revo 1600 in Windows XP, Vista and 7 at least as well if not better than the Live install without the CrystalHD card.

Currently it does not work with the DirectX builds, though undoubtably it will soon.

JR

The wiki says this, "In most cases XBMC does not provide hardware accelerated video decoding, thus placing the entire load of the video decoding process on the system's CPU. However, XBMC for Linux does support VDPAU GPU hardware video decoding, and in nightly builds of the XBMC SVN there is support for 1080p hardware accelerated video decoding via Broadcom Crystal HD on all platforms except Xbox"

And since the nightly builds are just Directx (correct me if I'm wrong but I thought officially that opengl builds were no longer being officially supported, tho there are people out there still providing them).
So I would conclude from this that either a recent nightly directx build or a the stable 9.11 opengl build would both support Broadcom's Crystal HD acceleration.
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#10
Unfortunately, the wiki is slightly inaccurate. Wiso, who does a lot of the porting from GL to DX, has not had an opportunity to do so yet. So for now the only windows version that uses CrystalHD is the GL version.
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#11
Thank you for clearing that up nate. also where is the best place to find these win-32 opengl builds, I know I wont find them with the regular versions since the official one is only DX but does anyone know of a website that maybe provides the opengl version that some kind individual has taken the time to compile themselves, I did a quick google, but the only websites that showed up didn't have the opengl version available.
TIA

Edit: NVM, I found one from a few days ago, just had to dig through the website.
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